The Resource Centre’s Corporate Legal Accountability (CLA) programme empowers lawyers and legal advocates, and drives forward global debate on legal accountability, to end corporate impunity for human rights abuses.

We do this through the following approaches:

1. Inform: We equip lawyers, legal advocates, and the business and human rights movement with the tools, information, and analysis they need to hold companies accountable and to protect human rights defenders from judicial harassment.
2. Connect: We connect lawyers and legal advocates from around the globe to foster exchange, cooperation, and peer-to peer learning on key CLA issues, and we help victims of corporate abuse find legal representation.
3. Reflect: We provide and foster thought-leadership and spaces for rich debate on key CLA developments and strategies, and legal aspects of key developments in business and human rights, such as strategic litigation, the Draft Binding Treaty on Business and Human Rights and mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence.

Our Corporate Legal Accountability Portal is the only global information hub on corporate legal accountability. We update the portal daily with information and resources from around the world.

• Latest Legal News: We provide lawyers and legal advocates with quick access to the latest news on corporate legal accountability, from lawsuits to legislative developments efforts around the globe, highlighting key CLA trends, opportunities and challenges.

• Lawsuit Database & Lawsuit Profiles: We monitor and summarise key lawsuits to identify, highlight and inform corporate litigation strategies. Our lawsuit profiles include lawsuits brought against companies to redress human rights abuses, as well as legal action brought by companies to silence critics (including SLAPPs). Our Lawsuits atabase makes it easy to search and compare cases.

• Publications: Through our flagship publications, such as our Annual Briefings and Quarterly Updates, we provide data and analysis on key legal accountability trends, developments, challenges and opportunities, to enable and inform effective legal strategies and advocacy. We provide deep dive analysis into specific CLA trends such as strategic litigation on environmental and labour rights, legal developments around SLAPPs, avenues for social audit liability, and human rights in the technology sector.

• Lawyer Directory & Insights: Our international directory of lawyers provides contact details and areas of practice of a diverse network of lawyers working on business and human rights cases around the globe. Our directory helps victims of abuse find legal assistance and gives lawyers the opportunity to connect and build synergies and alliances with their peers, increasing global collaboration and learning between lawyers. We conduct interviews with lawyers to provide the legal community with key insights gained by lawyers around the globe in promoting corporate legal accountability, to inform and strengthen their legal strategies. Lawyers share the lessons they have learned, challenges they have faced, and opportunities they see with regards to promoting corporate legal accountability.
  

• Blogs & Commentaries: We solicit and curate expert commentaries on legal and judicial developments on corporate accountability, to empower advocates with evidence and guidance to define their engagement on these issues. We run a blog series on pertinent legal trends, highlighting diverse voices from legal practitioners, civil society, academia, and business (e.g. Debate the Treaty, Beyond Social Auditing and Mandatory Human Rights Due Diligence).

Contact

Maysa Zorob, Programme Manager

Acknowledgement

This project is made possible by grants from Oak Foundation and an anonymous donor. Past funding was provided by JEHT Foundation and Sigrid Rausing Trust.